Replication materials for "Treaty Withdrawal and the Development of International Law"

Averell Schmidt (aschmidt@g.harvard.edu)

The Review of International Organizations

January 2024

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This replication archive contains all code and data necessary for reproducing the analyses contained in the paper and supplementary material.

Author successfully replicated the results in the following computing environment:

- MacBook Pro, 13", 2020
- Processor: 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 
- Memory: 32 GB
- Operating system: macOS Monterey 12.6.3 
- Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin17.0 (64-bit)
- R version 4.2.0 (2022-04-22) -- "Vigorous Calisthenics"
- RStudio: 2023.03.1+446 

Note that users may need higher specifications to execute the code. Cluster computing is recommended.  

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To reproduce the results:
1. Open R and set the working directory to the current folder (e.g., the folder containing this file)
2. Run scripts/00_package_installation.R (run time: depends on packages installed locally)
3. Run scripts/01_preprocessing.R (run time: 10 minutes)
4. Run scripts/02_analysis.R (run time: 6 hours 45 minutes) 
5. Run scripts/03_presentation.R (run time: 2 minutes) 


Note: (a) The scripts in steps 3, 4, and 5 must be run sequentially. 
      (b) All tables and figures are saved to the figs folder.
      (c) All data produced during analysis is saved to the data folder.
      (d) Code producing figures, tables, and numbers reported in the manuscript and appendix are indicated by "----"
      
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List of archive contents:

1. data: folder containing all data required for analyses
	- analysis_data.RData: output of 01_preprocessing.R
	- results.RData: output of 02_analysis.R
	- results: folder containing results of each analysis conducted in 02_analysis.R; these are compiled in results.RData
	- treaty_data: folder containing all original, primary treaty data used in analyses
		- actions_key.csv: classification of ratifications and withdrawals
		- unilateral_exits.csv: list of initial unilateral exits from multilateral treaties (adapted from Schmidt 2023 and extended through 2018)
		- LoN_II_treaties_list.csv: list of URLs of treaties deposited with League of Nations or with II- prefix; used to disambiguate registration numbers 			
		- participant_key.csv: participant-country code key
		- regime_ids.csv: treaty-regime key
		- tags_key.csv: United Nations subject tags use to classify treaties
		- unts_source_data.csv: source data collected from the United Nations Treaty Series
		- UNTS_urls.csv: classification of treaty URLs by treaty type
		- treaty_ratification_matrices.RData: treaty membership and withdrawal matrices produced by 01_preprocessing.R
		- regime_ratification_matrices.RData: regime membership and withdrawal matrices produced by 01_preprocessing.R
	- preprocessing: folder containing data gathered from secondary sources
		- atop5_0a.csv: data on secret alliances (Leeds, Ritter, Mitchell, and Long, 2002)
		- IdealpointestimatesAll_Jul2023.csv: estimates of states' UNGA voting ideal points (Bailey, Strezhnev, and Voeten, 2017)
		- AgreementScoresAll_Jul2023.Rdata: data on UNGA sessions (Bailey, Strezhnev, and Voeten, 2017)
		- NMC-60-abridged.csv: composite index of national capabilities data (Singer, 1987)
		- states2016.csv: data on states' entry/exit into/from international system (Correlates of War Project; https://correlatesofwar.org)
		- system2016.csv: state system membership by year (Correlates of War Project; https://correlatesofwar.org)


2. figs: figures and tables produced by 03_presentation.R are saved to this folder

3. readme.txt: this file 

4. scripts: folder containing all R scripts required for analyses
	- 00_package_installation.R: installs packages required to replicate analysis
	- 01_preprocessing.R: produces analysis data from source data and saves it to data/analysis_data.RData
	- 02_analysis.R: conducts all statistical analyses and saves results to data/results.RData
	- 03_presentation.R: produces figures and tables 

